Once seen as a “green solution” for the planet’s oil woes, biofuel has been branded a red herring at the United Nations climate conference in Bali.
Over the past two weeks organisations at the conference have been spelling out the pitfalls of biofuels, amazed that it could ever have been considered green.
“We are taking food from the mouths of the poor to put into the fuel tanks of the gas-guzzling north,” said Sandy Gauntlett, chairperson of the Pacific Indigenous People’s Environment Coalition. His colleague from the Global Forest Coalition, Dr Miguel Lovera, called on governments to reject “false solutions” to climate change, including biofuel.
Biofuels were initially considered “green” because their crops serve as carbon sinks, thus offsetting their emissions when they are burned.
A cause of controversy at the conference was how biofuels are accelerating deforestation in Indonesia and Brazil. Brazil has bought into biofuels in a big way and is, together with the United States, among the biggest producers of ethanol.
Illegal clearances of the Amazon rainforest to make way for biofuel crops are undermining efforts to fight climate change, Greenpeace said. The same applies to conference host Indonesia, which is aggressively planting biofuel crops. Deforestation is Indonesia’s most significant environmental headache.
The African Biodiversity Network said biofuels would lead to large-scale land evictions and deforestation in Africa as well. “The aggressive push for agrofuel [biofuel] development in Africa is a massive new threat to our farmers, food, forests, water resources and land rights,” Gathuru Mburu, coordinator of the network, said at the conference. “Sadly, this is just the beginning of a very big trend that is set to expand massively in 2008 and beyond.”
But Kevin Watkin, CEO of a large African biofuel investor, D1 Oils, called on NGOs to stop bashing biofuels in general, and to make distinctions between fuels and feedstocks.
“NGOs are right to be critical of soya and palm, which are produced unsustainably in areas such as Brazil and Indonesia,” said Watkin. “But these attacks don’t distinguish between sustainable biofuel crops like jatropha and food sources.”
D1 Oils is promoting jatropha in Africa as it is not a food source, but the South African government, among others, is still sceptical about the long-term effects of this plant.
Figures released at the conference by the Climate Action Network revealed that the amount of grain required to fill the tank of an SUV could feed one person for an entire year. Another concern is that it takes more energy to produce a unit of biofuel than the energy derived from it.
Even proponents of biodiesel, such as Ecoworld analyst Jeff Schafer, admit that if high-yield biofuel crops were grown on all the farmland on Earth, they would only meet 20% of current crude-oil energy demands.
In South Africa concerns about biofuel have been noted. Last week the government reined in plans for an aggressive biofuel rollout for South Africa, citing concerns about food security and the effect of climate change on the agricultural sector. The Cabinet cut back biofuel production from an initial proposed 4,5% to only 2% by 2013.